When there's just not enough cash in the bank and you're in a bind, the last thing you're able to do is drop a ton of money for pricey software like Adobe Creative Suite. And sometimes, the professional-grade stuff is too much overkill for simple tasks like putting together a poster, blurring out a license plate in a photo or cropping out a shaky part of your vacation video.

So that's what open source software is for. While they're sometimes not the most stable of applications, they're free and they oftentimes get the job done, just like their paid-for counterparts.

Note: Adobe Flash Player is just a piece of software that allows to play applications created with Adobe Flash, so these 2 applications are different. If you are looking alternatives for the development tool – in order to create animations – called Adobe Flash (without “Player”) go to Adobe Flash page. Note: Adobe Flash Player is just a piece of software that allows to play applications created with Adobe Flash, so these 2 applications are different. If you are looking alternatives for the development tool – in order to create animations – called Adobe Flash (without “Player”) go to Adobe Flash page.

This App is simple and allows several files to be opened at once. You’ll save yourself time and frustration if you switch to this app. Broken files are also allowed to continue as long as you don’t mind having the parts that are missing/broken show up as incomplete. The Unarchiver also allows multiple files with the same password to be opened together while having to only input password once. Kevlar1 Indispensible, especially for non-English environment There are several utilities that can uncompress files (zip, rar, etc.) However, where this free utility really shines is its ability to detect encoding of various file names and guessing them.

We compiled a list of some of the best open source Adobe Creative Suite alternatives. Cycle through for alternatives to Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and more! Replaces: Photoshop GIMP is easily one of the most powerful pieces of open source software available on the internet today. The app gives you the same photo manipulation features as Photoshop, as well as a variety of filters to choose from. There's also incredible hardware and plug-in support. Plus, there's plenty of sites that offer. Replaces: Photoshop An image editing application packed in a pretty little name, Seashore is built on OS X's Cocoa framework so it's made just for Mac users looking for an open source alternative.

Though it doesn't have some of GIMP's features, Seashore is perfect for novices looking for a simple image editor. Replaces: Acrobat Feel caught in a tizzy when you have a digital document you need to sign? Formulate Pro lets you open and write on PDF documents with a mouse and tablet, then save or print. Replaces: Illustrator Got a character you wanna sketch out, but don't have access to Adobe Illustrator? Inkscape's got the capabilities. Best yet, it supports advanced Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) features like markers, clones and alpha blending. And actually, it's very easy to navigate.

One of the simplest open source UIs we've used yet. Replaces: Illustrator Need to make a poster for your environmental club? Open Office Draw is a super easy-to-use desktop publishing application, part of the Open Office suite that's actually maintained by Sun Microsystems so it's a relatively stable build compared to the other applications featured in this article.